Tenure Reform Law: The Debates Ahead

Much of the attention on New Jersey’s new teacher tenure law signed by Gov. Chris Christie last week has been on its new rules regarding teacher tenure, its focus on student achievement and evaluations for judging teachers, and its streamlined legal proceedings for removing the weakest.

Getting less press, however, have been some of the critical details that make up the bulk of the 18-page law, not to mention the 49 pages of proposed regulations put forward by the Christie administration last week concerning the teacher evaluation piece of it.

School Improvement Panels

Central to the new law -- the Teacher Effectiveness and Accountability for the Children of New Jersey ACT (TEACH NJ) -- is an improved evaluation system for teachers, one that will be based on approved evaluation instruments and professional standards that look at both teaching practices and student learning.

But who will direct those policies and perform those evaluations has always been a point of some contention, and the law settled on an interesting balance.

In each school, a School Improvement Panel will be created that will consist of a principal or his or her designee, an assistant or vice principal, and a teacher. The teacher will be a “person with a demonstrated record of success in the classroom,” chosen in consultation with the union.

The panel will be responsible for overseeing the mentoring of new teachers and will conduct the evaluations of all teachers. One interesting part is that the teacher member will not be allowed to be part of those evaluations, unless agreed to by the union.

The New Jersey Education Association, the state’s dominant teachers union, wanted that provision, so not to throw their members into the difficult situation of teachers evaluating teachers. The American Federation of Teachers, the smaller union but representing Newark teachers, has asked that teachers be included.

Arbitration Process

A key component of the new law is the use of special arbitrators to make decisions when a tenure charge against a teacher or principal is contested. The timelines that limit the extent of disputes also are new. The decisions of the arbitrators is binding.

But who will those arbitrators be? Under the terms of an intensely negotiated provision, 25 will be in place, all members of the National Academy of Arbitrators and chosen by various stakeholders in the debate.

Eight arbitrators will be picked by the NJEA; three, by the AFT; nine, by the New Jersey School Boards Association; and five, by the New Jersey Principals and Supervisors Association. Only if a vacancy goes unfilled will the state commissioner appoint an arbitrator.

The arbitrators will have set fees for their work, with a limit intended to cut down on the prospect of cases being extended to earn the arbitrator and the lawyers more money. An arbitrator can make no more than $1,250 per day and no more than $7,500 per case. The state pays the bill for each case.

The rules of dispute are critically important. The law explicitly allows the arbitrator only to decide if proper procedures were followed, and not the merits of the teacher evaluation itself.

There are some exceptions. A teacher can contest facts in the evaluation and can raise issues of favoritism, nepotism, or political payback for things such as union activity. Beyond that, the law is clear that the evaluator’s judgment to the quality of a teacher’s work is not open to challenge.

“The evaluator’s determination as to the quality of an employee’s classroom performance shall not be subject to an arbitrator’s review.”

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